You may want to discuss with your students how this small patch of tropical rainforest differs greatly from other much more diverse rainforest just a few yards (or meters) away. The ecological conditions at this spot, particularly the water-logged soil, make it difficult for most tree species in the region to survive here, so the Pandanus trees flourish here without competition.

Panorama Viewing: Click the "View Panorama" button to see an interactive panorama. Click and drag your mouse in any direction to view other parts of the scene; press the Shift key to zoom in to see details and press Ctrl to zoom out. We recommend using the Deval VR viewer for seeing panoramas that do NOT have sound and the QuickTime viewer for panoramas WITH sound.

Tropical rainforests are well-known for their great diversity, but in a few sites, such as this small Pandanus swamp, there is very little diversity -- in this swamp, all of the trees are the same species.

Madagascar, the world's fourth-largest island, is also one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. The island has a land mass about the size of Montana and Idaho combined, and at its closest is little more than 300 miles (500 km) from Africa--yet it has been isolated from the continent for approximately 160 million years. The vast majority of the island's species are endemic (found nowhere else in the world) and the native ecosystems are under heavy threat from human encroachment, especially deforestation for subsistence agriculture. The island contains several very different ecosystem types, ranging from tropical rainforest in the northeast through shrublands and dry forests to spiny desert (or spiny forest) in the south. Many ecologists agree that as an ecosystem type, spiny desert is itself endemic, that there is nothing else like it in the world. The table below, with data from Conservation International, shows just how high a proportion of Madagascar's species are found nowhere else on earth. In fact, many of the island's species are endemic to just a single ecosystem type or even just a small portion of an ecosystem type.